Danger, polymath scribblings

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Telling stories has power; they connect us, help us work through the raw emotion, and give us a way to make sense of events. After last week’s devastating violence in Paris and Beirut, these nine bloggers shared theirs, helping us do just that. Reading their posts may not be easy — but it is important.

A writer from Cultive le Web was out for an evening with friends Friday night when shooting began on the rue de Charonne. The staccato phrasing of this play-by-play post captures brings readers some tiny measure of the fear, panic, and disbelief. It’s an unvarnished outpouring we wish he had no occasion to write, but are glad he did.

9:45 p.m. Noise, screams. A fight? A rowdy crowd there at the bar? They must be drunk, like on any Friday night in Paris, right? I come closer. A group of people…

Jessica Mitford took on the American funeral industry, the California Department of Corrections, and the Ku Klux Klan, but it was her 1970 exposé of The Famous Writers School which led to Time calling her “The Queen of the Muckrakers.” And if a courageous editor hadn’t reversed his decision to kill her story, it might never have happened.

Mitford had been aware of The Famous Writers School’s existence for some time. Anyone who was a frequent reader of newspapers, books or magazines would have seen its ever-present advertisements, inviting aspiring writers to cut out and apply for the free aptitude test. While Mitford was suspicious, she didn’t have anything concrete until her lawyer husband took on a new client.

Bob Treuhaft was approached by a 72-year old widow, living on Social Security, who had cleaned out her bank account to make a down-payment to The Famous Writers School. On the…

In Iran, they say, there are two books in every household – the Koran and Hafez. One is read, the other is not. To understand this joke you need do no more than join the millions who regularly throng the tomb of Hafez, 14th century poet of Shiraz and Iran’s national hero, as I did […]

Some friends of ours just lost their dog. I think back to what it was like when our dogs died when I was young, and feel the pain again.

Goodbye, Chai. You were most definitely a Good Dog, and I’m sorry you never got to meet our dog Strider. He’s getting older, and I don’t look forward to the day he dies, hopefully a long, long time from now. Goodbye again to Gigi, Terry and Sniffer, my old companions.

Recommended reading: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I read this almost by accident, as I ordered it on my Kindle when I’d intended only to read a sample…and then couldn’t put it down. Sad and joyous, all at once.

Well, it certainly ain’t James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but Ratatouille, Pixar’s stellar computer animated film about a Rat’s quest to cook, has some great language capping the end of the film. The writer behind the food critic, Anton Ego, uses a turn of phrase and some self-analysis of a critic’s role that is both touching and enlightening. Of course, if you are an intellectual gatekeeper who likes Finnegan’s Wake, feels the need to sprinkle in … Read More

Is it still juvenalia when you do your writing warm ups well into a career spent elsewhere? What should this be called? Do I dare to eat a peach? I have heard the paper books calling each to each, but at this point in my career, they do not call to me.